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One Man, Two Women and a Dog: Cases of Ageing in the Outdoors
No full textSummary These three auto-ethnographies are the embodied stories of lifelong outdoor enthusiasts. They explore the sensibilities of and entanglements with nature and corporeality of ‘Baby Boomers’. Each narrative reveals the embodied challenges remembered and experienced. We show that getting older and experiencing illness and/or injury does not deny opportunities to enjoy nature-based activities and performance in the outdoors. These narratives provide illumination and snapshots of older outdoor participants’ engagement in/with the outdoors. The first narrative highlights the sensibilities and real affects/effects of illness and how they are managed to retain involvement in outdoor leadership. The next explores the author’s emotions at adapting her embodied activities as she becomes older. The final tale describes how running and walking with an ageing dog opens up comparisons with the author’s own embodied capabilities and enjoyment of the outdoors. Information © CAB International 202
Interconnections and wellbeing. Embodiment of older lifelong outdoor enthusiasts and the more than human
No full textThis paper considers the sensuous feelings of 32 lifelong older outdoor enthusiasts. In a previous paper, the adaptations that these older folk had made in their lives in order to continue with their engagement with the outdoors were explored (Humberstone et al. 2022). This paper examines the ways in which these embodied feelings provide for the older persons’ wellbeing through their connect to the more than human and provide for awareness of and/or action in environmental issues, enabling mutual benefits. How being in the outdoors is experienced for these participants through their emotions and senses is examined, highlighting the ways in which they perceive their connections with the more than human and the ways in which these connections permeate into their everyday life and their personal wellbeing
It’s where the magic happens: Engaging student leadership through purposeful partnerships in sport
No full textThe case study aims to capture the fundamental features and outcomes of purposeful partnerships with sports organisations – celebrating ‘Where the magic happens’ through student-led projects in sport. The ambition of this short practical case study is to highlight our use of practical and event management modules that facilitate applied student leadership. This approach is underpinned by the university’s strategic aim to make a positive social impact in local communities through purposeful partnerships. The experiential projects build students’ leadership experience in developing, running and evaluating applied projects in partnership with sports organisations. In doing so, students build social capital with future employers, creating a cycle of employable graduates working in the sector, and a virtuous cycle for student-led knowledge exchange
Introducing dadness
No full textBased on interviews and a focus group with fathersFootnote1 who attended four dads’ groups in the South of England, this paper introduces the concept of ‘dadness’. Dadness is in circulation in the public sphere and has been noted in a handful of published sources, yet it has not received academic attention. This article conceptualizes ‘dadness’ and presents it as a useful concept within contemporary fatherhood and family studies, as well as noting the term’s accessibility. The term dadness is understood by men in this study as combining their individual fathering identity and their values about the fathering role, with actual day-to-day fathering practices. Interpretation of the data infers eight aspects of dadness that draw together existing conceptualizations of fathering and fatherhood in terms of accessibility, engagement and responsibility; ‘active fathering’; warmth, positive engagement activities, decision-making, responsiveness, care; intimacy; and embodiment. Dadness describes both how men think about fatherhood and enact their fathering practices, and is accessible (it is a term men readily understand and feel able to use). This article invites a debate about whether the concept of dadness has a wider potential outside of the specific context of a small-scale study in southern England
“I want kids to have the same feeling as I do towards physical activity”: Acculturation of British preservice physical education teachers
No full textThe purpose of this study was to describe the acculturation of six British physical education (PE) preservice teachers (PSTs). The research questions we sought to answer were: (a) What were the PSTs’ values, beliefs, and perspectives regarding PE? and (b) What factors shaped the PSTs’ values, beliefs, and perspectives during their acculturation? We collected data with three types of formal interviewing and employed standard interpretive techniques to reduce the data to themes. Key findings were that the PSTs aspired to a career teaching secondary PE, possessed a balanced orientation to teaching curricular PE and coaching extracurricular sport, and espoused a mostly traditional multi-activity curriculum that was dominated by sport. The main attractors to a career in PE were the opportunity to maintain a connection with sport and working with youth. The key shaper of the PSTs’ perspectives was their apprenticeships of observation. These findings should aid sport pedagogy faculty in their efforts to produce stronger initial teacher education programs
On the Land, in the Underground: The Rise and Fall of the ‘Crusties’
No full textFrom the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, the British New Age Traveller community created a vibrant scene that made its mark on the landscape and wider culture. Drawing from the post-war squatting movement, homegrown jazz festivals of the 1950s and the American hippies, Travellers were always an eclectic mix, unified by their existence on the margins. This chapter explores the development of the movement and in particular addresses the popularity of the 1970s free festival scene and then the punk explosion that led to the blurred subset of the ‘crusty’. It argues that ‘crusties’ were artifacts of a complex and often contradictory mobile subculture, one that attracted the optimistic, the disaffected and the anarchic. It explores how the increasing visibility of the ‘crusties’ in the 1980s, and uneasy embracing of 1990s’ rave, ultimately led to extreme political interference that guaranteed their demise. Deliberately unfashionable even in their heyday, and unusually a subculture that was not rooted in a particular genre of music, ‘crusties’ deserve recognition for their considerable contribution to twenty-first-century mainstream British culture
Word-Final /s/-/z/ Omission in Vietnamese English
Full text linkSoutheast Asian learners of English, including those from Vietnam, frequently omit word-final consonants in their English speech. Previous work on Vietnamese learners of English is limited, and errors are typically usually attributed to first-language transfer effects. No large-scale empirical study on Vietnamese learners has been carried out to aid the development of an evidence-based pedagogy. This study uses authentic spoken data to compare lexical and morphological word-final /s/ and /z/ in the speech of sixteen Vietnamese adult learners of English. We discuss the relative impact of frequency of use, whether the instance of a target /s/ or /z/ is in a root or bound morpheme, and whether the preceding phoneme is a consonant or vowel. An overall omission rate of 28.4% of expected instances was found. Morphological {-s} when it is preceded by a consonant has the highest error rate (50.7%). A multilevel binary logistic regression was performed to ascertain the relative effects. Morphological words containing /s/ or /z/ were significantly more likely to be pronounced with the /s/ or /z/ absent than lexical words containing a /s/ or /z/, as were those in clusters compared to those with a preceding vowel. The results indicate that phonological effects and morphological effects are stacked and not multiplicative and that the observed omission rates are not solely attributable to L1 transfer effects. Frequency of use is also highly correlated with accuracy
Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT
Full text linkThe use of artificial intelligence in academia is a hot topic in the education field. ChatGPT is an AI tool that offers a range of benefits, including increased student engagement, collaboration, and accessibility. However, is also raises concerns regarding academic honesty and plagiarism. This paper examines the opportunities and challenges of using ChatGPT in higher education, and discusses the potential risks and rewards of these tools. The paper also considers the difficulties of detecting and preventing academic dishonesty, and suggests strategies that universities can adopt to ensure ethical and responsible use of these tools. These strategies include developing policies and procedures, providing training and support, and using various methods to detect and prevent cheating. The paper concludes that while the use of AI in higher education presents both opportunities and challenges, universities can effectively address these concerns by taking a proactive and ethical approach to the use of these tools
Culturally sensitive schooling: understanding Pakistani Muslim parents’ school choices
Full text linkIntroduction Culturally sensitive schooling engages with diverse student populations and culturally relevant pedagogical strategies (Berglund, 2015) and embodies cultural responsiveness (Aronson, Amatullah & Laughter, 2016). Meeting the religious and cultural needs of Muslim Pakistani students, and the wider Muslim school community, is challenging for many schools in England. Culturally (in)sensitive schooling is an important consideration for Muslim Pakistani parents when choosing a school that aligns with their beliefs (Banks & Banks, 2015). This study based in Blackburn, Northern England suggests that it is the extent to which a schools’ Religious Education (RE) and Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum is culturally sensitive that affects Pakistani Muslim parents’ choice or secondary school. Background and policy context In England, the approach of culturally sensitive schooling was developed in the aftermath of the Swann Report ‘Education for All’ (1985). The Swann Report argued for cultural pluralism and opened the door for a range of multiculturalism policies for schools and local authorities (Mathieu, 2018). Cultural pluralism is a setting where a minority group maintains its distinct culture while participating in a multicultural society having a dominant, separate culture (May, 2005). Culturally sensitive schooling posits a curriculum that supports and maintains all religious beliefs and cultural identities of minority groups (Alsubaie, 2015). However, England’s state schools have a curriculum based on Christian and European traditions (Musharraf, 2015). This foundation poses challenges to a culturally sensitive education for Muslim children, particularly in the teaching of RE and RSE
Retrospective investigation of improvements in functional vision for adolescent students with cerebral vision impairments in a specialist residential school and college setting
Full text linkCerebral and/or cortical vision impairment (CVI) is the leading cause of childhood vision impairment in the Global North. Previous studies have demonstrated that the functional vision of children with CVI can develop over time, but evidence for the effectiveness of interventions is still in its infancy. In this study, we retrospectively reviewed student records from a specialist residential school and college in the United Kingdom that had implemented an evidence-based approach to assessment and intervention for adolescent students with CVI called the CVI Range. The outcome of CVI Range assessments were recorded annually over a 5-year period, and potential predictor variables such as measures of visual acuity and presence of conditions such as cerebral palsy and seizure disorders were recorded as part of standard practice within the service. A total of 73 annual assessments were analysed from a total of 24 students between the ages of 9 and 25 years old. We used a mixed model for repeated measures approach to reveal a significant fixed effect of time on functional vision that equated to a linear increase of 0.78, 95% CI [0.60, 0.97] in CVI Range Rating 2 for each year of participation on the programme. The mixed effects models also revealed significant interindividual differences in functional vision, which could be partly explained by a significant negative effect of acuity and by a joint positive effect of nystagmus and time, but not by age. These findings demonstrated that significant improvements in functional vision are still possible for students with CVI long after the accepted sensitive period of neuroplasticity in the visual cortex. Further studies incorporating research designs appropriate for evaluating complex interventions are required to determine which individual and contextual characteristics are valid and reliable predictors of improvements in functional vision for young people with CVI